Social Dem: Latvian Referendum 'Consequence of Polarized Politics'
A Social Democratic member of Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee says the language referendum in Latvia was more of a demonstration of discontent over ethnic policies, which tends to run stronger than they do in Estonia.
Jevgeni Ossinovski, a native speaker of both Estonian and Russian, said the result was not in question because turnout would be high in the case of a polarizing issue and native Russian-speakers are after all a minority.
Ossinovski drew a comparison between Harmony in Latvia and Centre Party in Estonia, which both still get most of the votes of citizens who are ethnic Russians in their respective countries.
"But unlike the Centre Party, where the party's leaders are overwhelmingly Estonian, most of the Latvian Russian minority's favorite Harmony Center are of Russian origin who have earned their political capital on Russian topics."
He added that the National Alliance, Latvian counterpart of IRL, is also more strident in its nationalist pronouncements. It would be unthinkable that Centre would react to being left out of the government with the slogan, 'Stop ethnic discrimination,'"he said.
Ossinovski said it would be dangerous to Latvia if the minority continued to feel excluded and called for integration issues to be tackled more earnestly. He said it would be wrong to conclude that the laws should be changed to keep referenda from being held in the future.
"The Latvian language referendum was merely a consequence of nationally polarized policy, but to solve it, the causes should be dealt with."
Kristopher Rikken